The invention relates to a compressed-air-operated vacuum generator or vacuum gripper.
Multi-stage ejectors with cascaded Venturi nozzles are known, for example, from WO 99/49216 and from the companies Piab, SMC and Vtec. A feature of the multi-stage principle is that the exhaust jet of an upstream stage is the drive air jet of the downstream stage. For example, a combination of the Coanda principle with the Venturi principle may be useful for increasing the suction volume flow. General vacuum generating principles are the Venturi principle with a jet nozzle and a receiver nozzle, the Bernoulli principle, wherein “fast” air with high dynamic pressure produces of a static negative pressure, and the Coanda principle, wherein the air follows a curved surface.
It is an object of the invention to provide a vacuum generator or vacuum gripper capable of efficiently generating a negative pressure.